s'cool, but its too easy, I find just standing in a corner (say the bottom right) and all the enemies come from either the top or the left, so al I have to do is A/W! Cleared the whole tempest level this way. But good work blah^3. Its kinda cheating on my part!

- you can take approx 3-6 hits before dieing - "east wing" of the temple level has been filled in with extra rooms etc - powerups (well, health and money) appear sporadically in each room - monsters take TWO shots to kill, not one! - when you die, you only restart the room, not the whole level

The last item is in expectation that we will add weapon powerups.

We could really do with some feedback on this version - especially is it too hard to be fun? Is it about right? Note that in previous versions many rooms have been "too easy" although I'd already made a fewer extra hard to even this up BEFORE we doubled the hitpoints of all the monsters, so I might have to scale it down again.

It kind of depends on whether we get powerups in in time for the compo deadline - without powerups i guarantee that temple is currently impossible to complete (or else I'd love to hear how you did it! Send me or Kev a private message...).

PS Blah's hot tip: When you shoot a monster, that reduces it's hit points (obvious!); but, when they hit you, the amount of damage you suffer is reduced by how much damage you had already done to them.

s'cool, but its too easy, I find just standing in a corner (say the bottom right) and all the enemies come from either the top or the left, so al I have to do is A/W! Cleared the whole tempest level this way. But good work blah^3. Its kinda cheating on my part!

1. Do you have the "monsters need two shots to kill" version yet?

2. Did you manage to clear Cloisters and Dome this way? Or just one of them? I think I made a mistake in the current version of Temple, and left Cloisters as the final room - this is an accident; it's now intended as the penultimate room (Dome should be the final room but I think I forgot to select it in the level editor; Dome is about 1.5-2 times harder than Cloisters).

PS I am so frickin glad that we put in room names in the basic design, or it would have made testing and feedback really painful! FYI as it happens, they are actually a core part of the game - teleporters etc use the names of rooms to decide where to send you.

PS to anyone who's not realised yet: please do not play pyramid for now - play temple instead. I haven't even tested pyramid for the last 9 - 10 updates at all! (and it was only half-done when I added it)

I get a java runtime error and the program crashes. I see the menu screen for about half a second, the screen flickers and it dies. Does this happen to anyone else?

Please do the following:

1. Wait five minutes and try again (Sun's Webstart implementation has some serious problems if you are unlucky enough to try playing just at the same time as the authors are uploading a new version - if you get any REALLY fatal crash, like the window disappearing, it's probably because webstart only downloaded half of the update).

2. Find your Java Web Start (JWS) program. (in windows, go to Programs - > Java Web Start; in linux, run /usr/java/jdkXXX/jre/javaws/javaws where jdkXXX is whatever you installed to. You can type "which java" on the command line in linux which will give you a very strong hint what your directory is called).

3. In the JWS program, go "File -> Preferences" and find the option to save a logfile (you have to specify a file somewhere and give it a name). Click OK then run Survivor again (you can just double click on it from within JWS and it will run automatically).

4. After it crashes, open that file you created and copy/paste it into a message to me or Kev (just click on one of our names in one of our posts).

it was cloisters, replaying now!, well, recheating now if that sounds possible. As for your first question, the monsters with two kills, I dunno, as I choose the dude who fires fast. Brb, playing it again

replayed dome, nice level, still easy tho, soz blah^3, i dont mean to put you off, its a nice game and all, but unless you somehow manage to put respawning positions across everysingle part of the wall, then there's no way you can stop me from doing so. Unless you get better AI, because its the AI thats letting me do it. Let me explain:

You find a sweet spot (not that hard to find really) where the alien dudes cant come at you from an angle, that forces them to "home" in on either the X/Y plane that is nearer to them. Let me explain more:

Say the alien dude si at position (5, 100), and your at position (0, 0). The Alien dude will go at you at a diagonal until his X plane matches the players. Thats say (0, 95). Then the alien's y starts descreasing and thats when they come at you from the top, similar situation is from the sides.

The place where you dont want to be is somewhere like (0, 0) and the respawn is (25, 25) because they will come at you diagonally.

Darkprophet: well done - we're going to have to change the gameplay in honour of your tactic!

Even in dome - IF you use Charlie - your tactic is foolproof.

In our defence, I will add that the current AI is moronic: it was only added as a temporary measure cos our main AI was running too slow (a bug we haven't fixed yet ). This moronic AI always approaches you directly from a compass direction - our intended AI approaches from random directions which would have defeated your tactic .

Unfortunately, unless we fix the performance bug, we'll have to go with a cheap hack for now (not enough time!). I think what we'll do is make you take damage every 2 seconds you stay still or similar...Muahahahaha...that makes it considerably trickier.

replayed dome, nice level, still easy tho, soz blah^3, i dont mean to put you off, its a nice game and all, but

Thanks - we had planned to have 4 weeks for game-testing, but various disasters reduced that to the 4 days we actually have so all help at this point is appreciated!.

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unless you somehow manage to put respawning positions across everysingle part of the wall, then there's no way you can stop me from doing so. Unless you get better AI, because its the AI thats letting me do it. Let me explain:

And that, my MMOG-developing friends, is an excellent example of what I've said many times before: Whatever algorithms you use for every part of your game, if it's popular they'll ALL quickly be reverse-engineered by your players .

DP's analysis is spot on. Formalise that into source code and you have our current AI routine. Now you see why I called it "moronic" .

- new control-system added: now you can: o re-assign keys o use the mouse to aim/fire ...we need feedback on the new options: how well does this satisfy people who didn't like the basic controls? ...personally, I found mouse control just isn't fast enough . Just like Doom, quake etc - mouse-only players never win

- sounds added o ...please ignore them for now, we're just testing. Yes, we are having trouble finding decent sounds

So, now we have the age-old question: do we add RMB = move towards aiming-sight?

Pro:

When you start the game, it's "obvious" how to play

Lots of people are used to RMB=move LMB = fire ever since Quake1

People who wanted to "shoot in the direction you're facing" finally have their wishes fulfilled

Con:

It's much harder to play the game this way

You lose a lot of the fun playing this way - the whole point of the game is run in one direction whilst shooting in a different one

A lot of people will never get as far as tyring the dual-keyboard or even mouse + kb controls if they have this available

...which means they won't "get" the point of the game

...and probably won't enjoy it that much

I, personally, spent the first one and a half minutes I played SmashTV curing the controls and yelling things like "This so STUPID!", "God, this game is gay!" (I was only about 11 at the time), "What a load of crap!".

It all goes a bit blurry then, but I do know that several hours later I was still playing . The effects of concentration and adrenaline on long-term memory!

I know this is a bit of an "issue": Cas has argued in the past that all games should be simple for the user to pick up and play (he explained it well, I shan't do him an injustice through paraphrase). Equally, in the last 5 years lots of games-reviewers have said things like "Game developers make games for themselves, not for the audience. These people are a dieing breed. In the modern world you have to make games for your audience" and generally been contemptuous, likening it to "programmers who try to do graphics".

But there's also a small backlash going on - the point of the game is to entertain, and if it is to be "original" then the audience are going to HAVE to learn new skills, and have their eyes opened, as a part of the process they are looking for. There are highly paid people at places like Sony - e.g. Raph Koster, lead developer for Everquest, StarWars: Galaxies etc - who actually BELIEVE that all their players are stupid and lazy and want "no challenge" and want "never to lose" and "always to win no matter how bad they are, so long as they spend enough time".

I was outraged the first time I heard that line of reasoning, and I'm still heavily against it - IMHO the best and most enjoyable (and popular) games were those that were challenging. And usually had off-the-wall control systems that required practice to get good at - and rewarded the skilled and the diligent by being "difficult to master - but with huge rewards if you can" (i.e. they took some getting used to, but then if you could rack it up a level and become a master, then the rewards were great).

E.g. rocket-jumping and shooting backwards in Quake (one requires careful jump-timing so as not to kill yourself, the other requires extremely fast reflexes and precise mouse control: you run forwards, whip backwards and fire, whip forwards all without stopping. It looks to observers almost like you shot backwards. And is extremely powerful in a game where being shot in the back is the usual way of dieing )

>"always to win no matter how bad they are, so long as they spend enough time"

Ye... well I think it's overdone these days.

Back in the old days games were 1. hard and 2. unfair - that was of course a bad thing. Then games become 1. hard and 2. fair, wich was somewhat optimal. But then it went even further and there are nowadays alot of games wich are absolutely fair (good) and absolutely easy (hum).

In the first moments you might think that you actually became a better player, but that isn't true at all - just play some older games and you'll see that you actually lost alot of skill. Games like Super Mario for the SNES are actually harder than most first person shooters (duh).

I also think that quick load/save is a real killer. Were is the thrill if you can just undo each mistake? And the negative sideeffect there will be alot of unfair parts left in the final product, because you can just undo your mistakes they won't make or break anything. So as a result you won't be able to really enjoy it even if you restrict your load/save behaviour.

It's all about balance. The first levels should be dead easy, but it should get harder. Collision detection should be either 100% accurate or in favour of the player. And so on...

I certainly hope you come up with a better solution to keep the player from not moving than killing him....that makes no sense at all

I feel for you on this. I don't like it either. But unless someone suggests a better solution, or Dave comes up with a new version of the AI that is fast...

OTOH, it's starting to grow on me. The game shouldn't be played standing still

Also, bear in mind that if/when we do get the flocking AI in, we'll most likely have to make several similar major changes to balance that . It'll be a bit like wiping the slate clean and re-examining how the levels work - e.g. I can almost guarantee Temple won't work properly with flocking .

I've been keeping up with the updates so far as they happen and I think it's comming along really well. I've enjoyed playing it so keep up the good work!

now time for a bit of a thread jack I'm afraid. With regard to what oNyx was saying about gameplay, I agree with most of it.

However the not being allowed to save til you get to a particular point is one of my personal pet hates. I have two reasoons for this.

1 I gon't get much time to play games so when I do I want to be able to start and stope it when I want with out loosing any thing.

2 I get really really frustrated having to replay the same bit of a agame over and over again just getting a bit further each time, because the designer as decided that I can only save in certain places. I really lose interest after a while and do somthing else. I guess I play games to have fun, not get myself frustrated and annoyed.

Ok sorry BlahBlahBlahh and Kev for having a rant on your thread. As I said I think Survivor is really shaping up to be a fun game.

Dan.

Ps I do find it really difficut to see the monsters and the lead character against some of the flooring textures.

I've been keeping up with the updates so far as they happen and I think it's comming along really well. I've enjoyed playing it so keep up the good work!

Thanks, Dan .

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now time for a bit of a thread jack I'm afraid. With regard to what oNyx was saying about gameplay, I agree with most of it.

Well, it's actually directly relevant to a certain extent - we are making a lot of decisions at the moment which are heavily influenced by this topic...

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However the not being allowed to save til you get to a particular point is one of my personal pet hates. I have two reasoons for this.

1 I gon't get much time to play games so ...

2 I get really really frustrated having to replay the same bit of a agame over and over again ...

Really interested to know how you rate survivor in this respect. The current system is:

Every time you complete a level, that fact is saved to disk in your home (user) directory; it's not shared with any other users of the computer . IIRC this happens as soon as the level is complete - so if it crashes later on in the game (or you switch off without quitting) then you don't have to redo the level.

NOTE: although we're only submitting one level to the competition, we have others. When we have them all enabled, you have to unlock the later levels by completing other levels first. So...your progress through the game itself is divided into levels, which (as noted) are automatically saved when you complete them. Also, you have free choice over what order you do levels - some particularly hard ones will unlock more than one level. Other particularly easy ones won't unlock any, and you'll have to do two or more of these to unlock a new level.

When you die, you restart in the room you were in, and ONLY that room is reset (all other rooms you've completed so far remain completed). But progress through rooms is NOT saved

...and levels are specifically designed with this in mind. There are several "routes" to the finish room in Temple (off the top of my head you could go 5 different ways), and this plays off the fact that if you fail to complete the level you start again - so you are encouraged to "explore" and find better routes. In fact, I'm really hoping that we'll soon add destroyable walls and objects, and also "secret" or hidden doors. Then exploring for different routes will become even more interesting... (NB: no chance of this happening in time for the competition!)

...also, each room is designed on the basis that you have to restart the room from scratch if you die. If you just respawned into the room straight away, e.g. with a 3 second invulnerability, the rooms would have to be redesigned to be a lot harder [emote]cackles evilly[/emote]

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Ps I do find it really difficut to see the monsters and the lead character against some of the flooring textures.

Yeah, when editing the level I forgot how the textures are stretched in some rooms, which makes it particularly bad. Also, I'm in the middle of making new textures for different mobs *right now*; if I manage to get it working today, we might have a wider variety of textures (and you finally will be able to tell which monster is from which mob!)

Oh, yeah, and I'm hoping to also give different mobs different hitpoints (cackles again) as soon as you can differentiate them visually - and know which ones to avoid!

Na, thats it, the ending should return you back to the main menu. Actually, now it'll take you back to the level select screen. In addition it should now make the level "Complete" meaning you can't select it again. You might even get some credits.

...and I have a partially-updated level file which (correctly) uses Dome as the final room, not cloisters. At the moment, you just have to find a different route to Dome (one that doesn't lead via Cloisters).

DP: yeah, I know - but it *is* a little trickier now, no? Also, I found that Weaponstore was pretty tough to wiggle through - but maybe that was just me.

This is going to sound like I'm contradicting myself a bit but in a game like Survivor to some extent its part of the challange of the game. It's also slightly tempered by having lives and (i presume at some point) being able to pick up extra lives. Also the idea of finding different routes and and secrets (may be interactive terrain?) will help as well.

I've no problem with restarting in the previous room with the room you died in getting refilled. That again is challenging.

It's mainlygames like Medal of Honour on the GameCube where I seem to get stuck in [loop]do a bit, get killed[/loop] and I do rememebr playing the same level on Giana sisters when I was young over and over again and dying in the same place

I think the key point it comes down to is level size/compexity. If you have a really big level and every five min you have to fight though all the easier (and hard) rooms to get to the point that your stuck on to then die and have to do it all again, it will get a bit tedious. If the levels are smaller (but lots of them) or may be in stages, then there is not as much to keep having to replay.

Maybe you could place save points or something or have a cost off your score to save at them? say it cost 500 pts or somthing? I don't know if that would work.

I like the idea of 'opening' levels up based on the ones you compleated so far (will you be able to replay levels if you want to, say to show off to a friend. or will they be locked?) . Also are you thinking about the levels you open up being linked together in a theme? (I hesite to say plot) or just being more levels are available?.

so after all this rambling what I mean to say is I think that Survivor will be fine how your planning it

Indeed. Savepoints work just fine if they aren't too far away or too inregulary. If it's designed with that in mind it usually works very well and the difficulty ramping gets magically way better, too. It's of course a different thing if it's some kind of last minute decision.

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